including the advocates of populist thought in Iraq, the so-called Ahmll
Group, which was formed in 1931.^72 The Arab nationalist group had such
names as the Syrian Zaklal-Arsnzl, the Syrian-Lebanese Qusyanyln Zurayq
(d. 2001), the Lebanese Anynn Sa‘mdah (d. 1949), and the resident of Iraq Xmtie
al->uxrl(d. 1968).^73 Liberal and leftist writers on the other hand were
common names among readers throughout the 1940s and until some time in
the 1970s. The leftist groups had a strong presence throughout the first half
of the century, as their programs partook of Marxist ideology at large while
targeting local and regional issues and problems. Poetry was no less involved
in these issues, especially at a time when the West was confused with both
colonialism and Zionism. School texts all over the Arab world, and under the
supervision of AbnKhaldnn Xmtieal->uxrl,^74 accelerated national conscious-
ness through anticolonial poetic selections. From Shawql, there is the renowned
verse “red freedom,” and from the Tunisian Abnal-Qmsim al-Shabbl(d. 1934),
there is the famous celebration of the people’s will to survive, whereas from
the Iraqi poet Ma‘rnf al-Ruxmflthere is the satirical verse against mandated
rule, “with a flag, a constitution, and a parliament; intentionally distorted.”^75
Poets contributed to every political and cultural platform, and, in times of
great political rivalry and competition, they were enthusiastically sought
after to appease the anger and expectations of both the elite and the masses.
Questioning the nationalist rhetoricA many-faceted poetics has been growing steadily since 1967, the Israeli
conquest of the surrounding Arab regimes and occupation of more lands.
This growth in a modernist poetics was in pace with the innate search for
a role and a meaning for poetry and in keeping with the internal and exter-
nal pressures, war and cultural and economic encroachments. Poetry since the
late 1940s has been a scene of confession, criticism, intellectual vigor, ideol-
ogy, and experimentation. Yet, the search throughout has borne the mark of
negotiation between tradition and traditionalism, modernity and subservience.
Since the 1960s poets have to speak for a political unconsciousness as well as
for the desperate sense of betrayal among the masses that have already placed
their faith and trust in national discourses of struggle, freedom, independ-
ence, and Arab nationhood.^76 Poets come up with a disturbing and destabi-
lizing aesthetic, one that questions ideology and grand narratives without
conciliatory or utopian recipes. It is not ambivalence that distinguishes this
poetics, but rather the shock that leaves the door open for the listener to make
choices. Writing on the Palestinian predicament, their siege in Beirut by
Israelis and Phalangists in 1982, the Palestinian poet Ma.mnd Darwlsh
(b. 1942) wrote a memoir in prose, Dhmkirah lil-nisymn(1995, Memory for
Forgetfulness), to account for the rupture and the wound that never heals.
Palestinian identity is held suspect, as if it were a “contagious diseases.” Yet,
Arab governments still use Palestine as an ideological referent “to uplift
POETIC TRAJECTORIES: CRITICAL INTRODUCTION